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At the breakneck pace at which technology keeps changing, businesses need new and innovative services to stay competitive. Google and the global consulting firm PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, hope to help companies with that through a new business partnership announced Tuesday.

The companies say the joint effort will bring together Google's innovation expertise, technology platforms and Internet scale with PwC's experience at delivering business consulting and strategy services to a range of customers. They say their goal is to "help companies collaborate more effectively, better use technology and information, and adapt to the disruptive forces shaping the world."

As part of the new partnership, PwC is also adopting Google for Work apps for 45,000 employees in the U.S. and Australia. Those apps include Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs and Hangouts.

"Ultimately, our collaboration is about helping clients to embrace their journey to the cloud, and transform their organizations to thrive and maintain relevance in a rapidly changing world," said Tom Archer, PwC's Google strategic alliance leader.

'The Artist Formerly Known as Enterprise'

Google rolled out Google for Work, its rebrand of Google Enterprise, in early September.

"We never set out to create a traditional 'enterprise' business -- we wanted to create a new way of doing work," Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt explained in a Sept. 2 blog post about the rebranding. "So the time has come for our name to catch up with our ambition."

The whole concept of Google for Work is premised on cloud computing being the go-to platform for today's business world, no matter what size the business. And since announcing the new work strategy, Google has teamed up with numerous other companies to expand its cloud services. Recently added Google for Work partners include Freshdesk for help desk agents, Insightly and Solve CRM for CRM, MavenLink and Smartsheet for project management, and Sage One and Xero for small-business accounting.

Google has also launched a Google Cloud Platform for Startups that provides $100,000 in cloud services credit to qualifying new companies. And its updated suite of tools in Google Apps for Work now enables individual employees to install apps without the support of a systems administrator.

Acquiring Knowledge 'Most Important'

We reached out to PwC spokesman Mike Davies to learn more about which customers the companies plan to target through their new partnership.

"All types of clients could benefit," Davies told us via e-mail. He added that PwC and Google aim to help client companies "use technology to the best effect...to serve their customers as efficiently as possible and provide the best connections between their employees."

The greatest challenges facing businesses today are "acquiring the knowledge most important to their operations, securing that information and using it optimally," Davies said. That's why effective collaboration is more important than ever.

He added that details about additional services PwC and Google will offer "are yet to be announced."